Small and cheap laptop recommendations

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geraldwkoonce

New Member
May 20, 2022
2
0
1
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
I have a bunch of 10-year-old+ Dell Studio 1558s (in fact, I'm on the road typing this reply on one now). There are a zillion different configs (after all, Dell sold these with over 200 different lid styles alone), but it is possible to find / build one with an insane configuration. This one has 16GB RAM, 4G cellular data, AX WiFi6, Blu-ray burner, 1920 x 1080 matte screen, backlit keyboard, yadda-yadda. Building one isn't for the faint of heart (1558s have a well-deserved reputation for melting, there are no official Windows 10/11 drivers, etc.)

If you're interested in how I did this, start here.
All in all a great laptop, but the battery is not enough, with active use I have enough for 1-3 hours
 
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Terry Kennedy

Well-Known Member
Jun 25, 2015
1,140
594
113
New York City
www.glaver.org
All in all a great laptop, but the battery is not enough, with active use I have enough for 1-3 hours
The battery packs that came with those laptops are long past their prime. There are a number of places selling both 6- and 9-cell packs new. I'm almost positive that inside the pack is just a bunch of 18650 cells. One day I'll probably see if I can non-destructively take a dead pack apart and replace the cells with 3500mAh ones and see what sort of runtime I can get.
 

geraldwkoonce

New Member
May 20, 2022
2
0
1
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The battery packs that came with those laptops are long past their prime. There are a number of places selling both 6- and 9-cell packs new. I'm almost positive that inside the pack is just a bunch of 18650 cells. One day I'll probably see if I can non-destructively take a dead pack apart and replace the cells with 3500mAh ones and see what sort of runtime I can get.
It will be very interesting to know what you got. I'm looking forward to
 

unwind-protect

Active Member
Mar 7, 2016
414
156
43
Boston
Speaking of batteries, my default for small "terminals" are ebay-sniped X-series Thinkpads. The major reason is that you can get parts such as replacement batteries easily. Tell that to my MSI barebone...